"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
Spirit reminds him so much of when he was a child – fearless, loud, and running headfirst into whatever adventure lay just ahead. Maybe that’s why he worries so much when the boy runs out of his sight. But Risk swallows the worry and watches carefully for the shimmer of his son’s blue marbling between the trees. His ears turn forward as he catches the sound of padded little paws bounding over crunching leaves. The boy is eager to take the form of predators like his mother despite never being shown how. It brings his father a quiet sense of pride to see him transition from each shape so naturally.
“Do you intend to scare your mother?” he calls, and the crunching leaves come to a quick stop. Risk peers around a wide tree to find a young bobcat staring back up at him, snickering and giggling to himself. A smile finds his face as Spirit nods and pounces onto his leg, playing nipping at him with needle-like kitten teeth. The elder male lowers his head to breathe a snort across the child’s face in disapproval. “Your teeth are sharper than you realize. Try to dull them when you play fight, won’t you?”
The finer mechanics take time. Slowly, with his eyes squinted in effort, he manages to give himself little puppy teeth instead. Risk nods and places a light kiss across his forehead before continuing forward. With each step, his fur grows shaggy and his limbs grow longer. Antlers rise from his skull until he is a towering elk. He is careful to watch for the kitten following him, which is easy considering the way he makes himself known by loudly bounding alongside him.
“Step in my tracks to quiet your movements. You don’t want her to know you’re coming,” he explains. Spirit looks up at him with ever mischievous green eyes glistening. He slows his speed and seems to take his father’s advice into consideration, leaping carefully from each hoof print to the next. The elk is well aware that Sochi would most likely feign some surprise for their child, but he teaches him to properly stalk all the same. Risk doesn’t want his son to ever learn whether he comes back from the dead or not.
The hunt had been successful this morning and, as a result, her mood is light. Her belly is full and she is sated as she moves forward through the forest, her heavy body making a surprisingly little amount of noise as each foot falls gracefully. It has been weeks since her last encounter with the strange brand of Beqanna magic and now that she has found a home, a place to rest, she feels something like peace begin to enter into her life. Not enough to permeate her soul—never enough to give her true rest—but enough to soften the edges of her biting fury. Enough to soothe the raging anger of her wounds.
She leans down to bite at an itch on her leg when she hears them.
Her ear twitches just slightly, a whisker on her nose moving, and she straightens slowly. She remembers what it had been like to teach Reia the way of the hunt—to welcome Nikolaus back into the fold and teach him the same, to pass along such skills to her and Castile’s youngest—but she has never had the pleasure of teaching the hunt to a predator like Spirit. Especially one with his father’s endless gifts.
There is something like pride in her chest when she catches the sight of them out of the corner of her eye, tail twitching behind her. It would be easy to double back now, she thinks. To catch them both by surprise when she had been the intended target, but she doesn’t want to waste such a valuable lesson. So instead she picks up her pace again, albeit slower than before, and continues to make her way through the forest. She keeps her ear trained on them, but otherwise, she gives no hint that she knows they are coming.
she said a war ain't a war before both sides bleed
@[Risk]
I was less than graceful, I was not kind
be out watching other lovers lose their spine
As a child, Risk used to bare sharp teeth at his brother just for fun. He hunted mice but his soft heart made him let them go in the end. He never did develop a stomach for the kill but there is some minute part of him that enjoys the hunt – the tracking, the stalking, the final leap. While Sochi would certainly best him in a fight, he could still give her a run for her money. Spirit would someday surpass them both with his natural instincts and abilities, though. He presses himself low to the ground as he stalks with his tail twitching excitedly behind him.
Risk watches as his lover – did he really think of her that way? – resumes her movement. Each step is fluid and poised even with the hesitation in each footfall. He turns to look at Spirit only to find that the boy is no longer there. His ears swivel forward and he turns, first left and then to the right. There is fear evident in his eyes as he begins to panic. Just as he turns back to Sochi to call out for her, a great horned owl drops from the trees ahead of them in a silent swoop.
If he looks closely enough, he can see the talons are dulled to simple badger claws.
The giant bird lands on Sochi’s back and mimics rending her skin with his little feet before hopping off. In that small leap, he is a little colt with blue marbling once more. Risk exhales the breath he had been holding and picks up a small trot to catch up to them.
“You went completely rogue on that one,” he says as he pulls the boy to his chest. Adrenaline still hums in his veins but he tries to settle himself. Spirit laughs and bumps his father’s chin with his nose before proudly looking to his mother.
“Did I scare you too? I noticed how quiet the owls are the other night while you were both sleeping,” he boasts before realizing he’s outed himself. “While.. while we were sleeping. Heh.”
He is a terrible liar. Finally, Risk has found a flaw in their otherwise perfect son. He makes a mental note to watch him more carefully but there is still some sense of joy and pride in his careful studying of the world around him.
The boy is talented. She is constantly surprised by how quickly he picks up on the things that her father and him teach him—how fluidly he shifts, how quickly he learns the things he can shift into. There is seemingly no limit to what he can learn and how he can manipulate his own body, and she finds that she is endlessly fascinated by the ways that he uses it to his own advantage. The tricks he pulls so seamlessly.
He surprises her by shifting and her nose twitches when she realizes that she no longer hears the footfalls behind her—at least not as many as before. She catches the blur of movement out of the corner of her eye and drops low to the ground, feeling his dulled claws rush against her back. Pleased more than anything, she lets out a roar and twists to snap her jaws in the air by him, knowing she wouldn’t make purchase.
When he hops off and leaps, she shifts herself, stepping forward as her equine self. She shakes her mane out on both sides of an impossibly scar-less neck, the roping tangles falling somewhat elegantly despite the dirt and the blood in them. Her lips twitch into a shadow of a smile as she considers the boy.
“Is that so?” Something like humor sparks in her silver eyes. “You must be terrifying when we are all sleeping.” There is nothing of rebuke in her tone though—nothing to signify that she is displeased that the boy had managed to grab onto her back or surprised her. She is pleased, after all, to see just how well he is learning—pleased to know that he was stepping into the same role of his parents, if not better.
She flashes her gaze to Risk and it lingers for a second, something like a secret on her lips before she turns back to their son. “What else have you been doing while we are sleeping?”
she said a war ain't a war before both sides bleed
![[Image: sochi.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/rs3xFJR0/sochi.png)